


War, Guilt, Redemption

by Melime



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Guilt, Introspection, Near Death, No Dialogue, Philippa survived, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 14:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14426913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: There was a story to be told about the Battle of the Binary Stars. A story that would be neatly placed in the Federation’s history books without a second thought. A story that wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.---Michael is consumed by guilt after the events of the Battle of the Binary Stars, while Philippa is alone in a Klingon ship trying to recover from her injuries.





	War, Guilt, Redemption

There was a story to be told about the Battle of the Binary Stars.

A story of a protegée turned reckless by trauma still too fresh after many years. A story of a dismissal perhaps too rash, the human away placed above Vulcan logic without a second thought. A story of a betrayal equally hurting to both parties, and equally unexpected, driven only by need and desperation. A story of a conflict needlessly born, even though none of its critics could agree on how that conflict could have been avoided. A story of an attempt at redemption for the briefest of mistakes, born out of nothing if not the intention of keeping others safe. A story of death and loss, of both sides symbolic losing their leaders together, the perfect representation of all the life lost to that brief conflict. A story of a punishment, hastily carried and passively accepted, with no discussion as to the justice of it all, its validity outside of a message to the whole Fleet as to what happened to mutineers.

A story that would be neatly placed in the Federation’s history books without a second thought.

A story that wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.

\---

The Klingons came for her home.

It was one of her earliest memories, and certainly the most vivid. The explosions, impossibly loud to her infant ears. The screams of those she knew, her neighbors, the few children that she studied alongside to, her parents…

As vivid as the memory was, it was nowhere close to clear. The attack was a rain of fire that threw chaos upon her colony. A peaceful night like every other turned into a myriad of screams and blood and limbs and death.

She would try for many years to make sense of those memories, to neutralize the pain by forcing her brain to see that as any other historical event. Those memories were feelings and sensations, and only by turning them into facts she could control them, control the effect that trauma had on her.

It was how Vulcans dealt with trauma, removing the power that memory had to evoke a negative emotion. Feel only what you allowed yourself to feel, There was no need to fear a memory, no pain could come from it that couldn’t be stopped by having control over one’s mind. It was what they taught her from the start, the first lessons in control coming while the smell of smoke and burnt flesh was still ingrained in her mind.

She was never allowed to feel that pain to its fullest extent, to deal with that feelings as an adult. All the pain was selled way as she was just a child, and it remained there, frozen in time.

Sarek taught her to protect her own mind the only way he knew how, by building barriers and closing doors, by turning her back to any memory that would hurt her. If her mind was a minefield of trauma, he would rescue her, keep her safe, by helping her isolate each mine, locking them away and always being mindful to step around them. He couldn’t help her diffuse them, he didn’t know how.

But at the end of the day she was still human, not Vulcan. Her mind wasn’t made for blocking and ignoring, for denying memories any hold over her emotions. The minefield was still there, as active as it had ever been, and she would always be one false step away from an explosion.

In a lost corner of her mind, that scared, hurt child was still crying, still in pain, still trying to find shelter from Klingon fire. And the longer that child was kept locked away, more of a danger she posed to the adult she had become.

\---

When she first stepped foot in the Shenzhou, it was in shame.

Shame was a human emotion, and she wasn’t supposed to feel it. She wasn’t supposed to still be influenced by her emotions. She was supposed to be above it all, to have complete control over her emotions. It was what she was taught to do her whole life, and she thought she had took the lesson well, but at the first sign of complications, there she was, feeling again, as human as all her classmates always accused her of being.

After all those years, she was still too human, despite her best efforts. If Vulcans were capable of disappointment, Sarek would surely be disappointed by her inability to follow his teachings. She was his special project to prove that true cooperation between humans and Vulcans was possible, not simply in the form of the Federation, but both species working together with the same set of values, that humans too could control their emotions and achieve logic the same way that Vulcan ancestors had done so many centuries before.

And then she proved just the opposite, that even a human raised in the Vulcan way from early age was still too emotional to work alongside Vulcans, that a human would never be good enough for a Vulcan ship. Everything her training had meant to achieve turned to nothing, because she still failed her admission, and she didn’t even know why.

The reasoning of Vulcans wasn’t always apparently, and only rarely they were willing to share their thought process. To demand an explanation would have been seem as an irrational expression of emotion, and serve only to further justify their decision. She knew enough not to question their motives, even if the doubt ate at her.

And even if she wished to know, Sarek made it clear that he wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t permit her to further disgrace herself and his name by association. She was doomed to ignorance, with no hope of one day improving herself until she was good enough to follow her childhood dream.

That single refusal closed the doors of her future on Vulcan forever, cutting all but the familial ties she had with the land she grew up in. She couldn’t stay there anymore, and she had nowhere to go, nowhere she would belong.

She changed herself so she would fit in on Vulcan. Abandoned all the traces of humanity that she could purge from her system. Let go of everything her biological family had imprinted on her. She abandoned so many parts of her to become as close as she could get to Vulcan that now she didn’t know how to be anything else.

It was ironic, all her effort turned against her. It was because she was so close to her goal that she became so distant from humans. Her near perfect record of success on the first portion of her life now dictated how difficult the rest of it would be. She wasn’t Vulcan enough, but she was no longer human, not quite anyway, which made her not human enough for Starfleet.

It was a double edged sword. To be accepted by her new crew, she would have to become more human, and each step taken on that direction would set her further away from what she came to consider her homeland.

The part of her that was still too human didn’t think it was fair. The part of her that was always too Vulcan knew that fairness didn’t factor into this situation. Things were as they were, and there was nothing she could do to change them, so there was no point in complaining or commiserating. All she could do was to join the Shenzhou crew and do the best job that she could, find a new purpose in her life, and prove that she wasn’t as burdened by human weakness as her Vulcan peers always accused her of being.

\---

The Klingons were coming for her home.

It was just as before, and it was all her fault. The guilt flooded her mind, a series of pointless what-ifs that always ended in a direct connection between her actions and the threat they now had in front of them, going by too fast for her thought process to properly analyze them.

Things weren’t as they were before, and yet, they were just the same. It was a battle they couldn’t win, and the Klingons wouldn’t respond to diplomacy. Everything was wrong, and she had to find a way to keep her ship safe. Everything was wrong, and she had to find a way to keep her shipmates safe. Everything was wrong, and she had to find a way to keep herself safe.

Maybe it didn’t have to happen this way. Maybe, if they had more time to think, they would be able to find a way out of this situation without a need for shedded blood. Maybe even the Klingons could walk away from a battle. But there was no time, and there was no good plan, and the Klingons wouldn’t allow them to leave.

Once again her home was in danger, and she didn’t know what to do. Once again her home was in danger, and she felt as much of a child then as she had been the first time. Once again her home was in danger, and the consequences of this event would follow her for the rest of her life.

She didn’t set out to fight against her captain, to question her wisdom and presume to replace her judgment with Michael’s own. It wasn’t her intention for them to fight, all she wanted was to advise, to help, to keep everyone safe.

Her home was in danger, and she was no longer a scared little kid, powerless to act. Her home was in danger, and she turned back into the child that couldn’t do anything to protect herself or her family, as powerless as she had been then. Her home was in danger, and she had to fight through the panic to find her logic if she wanted to be able to protect it.

Her thoughts were looping faster than it seemed possible, her quick mind as much of a curse then as it had been a blessing many times before. She didn’t have the luxury of simply following orders, she couldn’t act without thinking, or focus on just one problem at a time. There was always too much on her mind, and at a time like this, that mean she needed to find a way to organize the chaos that thinking of all the hypothesis brought along.

Nothing was as it was supposed to be. Her ship was in danger, and she didn’t know how to save it. She didn’t know how to keep everyone safe, but she had to. It was her responsibility, as it was her fault they were in danger. She had to find a way to end this, no matter the cost.

\---

She didn’t know when the Shenzhou became her home.

It was one of those things that just happened, as she was trying to survive each day of her informal exile.

At first, she would have given anything to go back to Vulcan, even given up on her dream of working on a ship. It would be better to be surrounded by logic, even if it meant turning her back to space and all the possibilities of discoveries that laid beyond her planet.

Vulcan was familiar, it was the only home she could properly remember, as her memories of the colony had been swallowed by the pain of its destruction. In a way, she was more Vulcan than she was human, and she didn’t want to forget that.

She never meant to stop thinking of Vulcan as her home, she didn’t want to prove her oppositors right by abandoning it, even in her mind. Perhaps in a way, she was hoping to return one day, that her stay in Starfleet would be short lived, lasting only enough for her to prove herself. It wasn’t a conscious hope, if it had been, she would have long since pointed how illogical it was to hope for such a thing. She knew she wasn’t returning, it was made clear enough for her that this was her new life.

Still, she wanted to hold on to Vulcan inside her mind, for as long as she could. Vulcan was her home, not that ship full of illogical humans. As long as she remember that, maybe there was a place where she belonged, even if it was a place she wasn’t allowed to go back to for more than the briefest visits. It was better to have a distant home than no home at all.

It was against her better judgement that she opened herself to the Starfleet way, to the human way. And yet, it was the purest way of coming home, by returning to the little girl that she was long ago. She thought she had buried that human girl along with her family, left her behind forever on her home turned battlefield.

Her captain played no small part in this. Captain Georgiou had a way to make everyone feel welcome as a part of her crew, and she always seemed to know how to help them achieve their full potential. She was the best humanity had to offer. Her emotions informed her judgment, but they didn’t control her. She controlled them, used them to help her deal with other people. All her suffering just made her kind, and although she wouldn’t be an easy opponent to face in battle, she wasn’t someone who was willing to inflict suffering upon others when that could be avoided. She was the perfect embodiment of Starfleet principles.

Captain Georgiou proved to her that the Vulcan way wasn’t the only way, or the only right way, or even the best way. She taught Michael to embrace the humanity that had been denied to her for so long, to be in touch with her feelings instead of running away from them. She finished the lesson that Amanda had tried so hard to teach her daughter, but never could in the heart of Vulcan society, that being human wasn’t a fault and that having feelings didn’t make her lesser.

If Michael had been sent to a different ship, under a different captain, maybe she wouldn’t have made it among the humans. A different captain might have shamed her for being too Vulcan the same way she had been shamed for being too human, and that would only have lead to her closing up more, trying to become even more Vulcan. A different captain might have pushed her even further away from her humanity, made her believe that everything she heard about humans was right and that they were just as primitive as she was lead to believe. A different captain might have made her feel so unlike all the humans on the ship that she would force herself to continue being othered, never a part of that crew, never a part of nowhere.

Captain Georgiou was the reason she was able to find a new home on the Shenzhou. Without her, Michael would have remained as lost as she had been her entire life. With her, Michael learnt the balance between Vulcan and human that Amanda had always tried to teach her and Spock and never could, and she found that balance decades before her brother.

Michael embraced her emotions, allowed them to inform her logic and her decisions as they did for her captain, and with that she became more than anyone expected of her.

And so, little by little, the Shenzhou became her home.

And then it was all taken away.

\---

The Klingons were there in front of them, and no one knew what to do.

It was hard not to let this cloud her mind, the Klingons were her old enemies, destroying her life since the very start. And now they were a threat to the life she had made for herself.

It was too much all at once, and she didn't want to deal with this, but she had no other choice. As they were, things didn't look too much in their favor, and the Shenzhou couldn't give itself the luxury of being without its first officer. So she had to push down her trauma once more, ignore all her pain once more, pretend that the Klingons were just another alien race and that they had to establish peaceful contact with them, or at least try as much as they could to achieve that goal.

To keep her ship safe, to keep her crewmates safe, to keep her captain safe, she did what she thought she would never do. She swallowed her pride and called her father for help, because as much as she hated to admit it, the Vulcans had a better record in their interactions with the Klingons, and if there was someone who would know how to deal with them, that person would be Sarek. So she called for his help, even though she knew that he wouldn't let her forget that, and would even complain that she had sought his help.

At least, she never lost access to his secure diplomatic frequencies. They were still family, even if she had failed in following the destiny that he had set for her. They were still family, even if it had been years that she was returned to human culture and reconnected with some of the emotions she thought to have purged from herself permanently. They were still family, even if between them there was the ghost of whatever influence she might have been to Spock in relation to his decision to abandon Vulcan and join Starfleet. The ties that united them could never be cut, not truly, and he would never push her away, not more than the same distance that he had reserved for all of his children.

And as they talked, things were still the same. She was still too human for him, he was still too Vulcan for her. That could never change, as much as it pained them both in every interaction. And yet, behind the logic and the cool expression, there was concern. He still cared for her, would always care for her, the human that he couldn't quite shape to the Vulcan way, but that got closer than everyone else thought that was possible, the child that carried a piece of his katra, given long ago to keep her alive.

They agreed on their interpretation of the Klingons. Their minds were still similar after all this time apart, all that she had grown beyond his Vulcan teachings. They saw what the others on that ship couldn't, they saw into the Klingon mind, they understood their ways, even as they were so distant from what either of their cultures taught.

He told her what she wanted to know, but it wasn't what she needed to know. That information was dangerous in her hands, not because she would abuse it, but because it wouldn't be possible for her to use it without seeming like she was after revenge from what the Klingons took from her. Sarek knew that, which was why he hesitated to help, even as his daughter's life was in danger, and she was too far away for him to offer her anything other than information.

Her history couldn't be forgotten, and it made things different for her than they would be for anyone else on that ship. If anyone else were to follow the Vulcan way, maybe the conflict could be avoided without any further discussion, but she wasn't anyone else. She was the child that lost her family and her home to the Klingons, who was raised outside of her culture because of the Klingons, who faced a life of hardship and not belonging because of what the Klingons took away from her. It was impossible to divorce that from any action she would take, however good intentioned it could be.

To attack first, as the Vulcans had done, could work for them, could save them, could end a war before it began. But she couldn't be the one to do it, not if she wanted her intentions to be believed. And yet, she was the only one who could do it, the only one who knew what to do, the only one who even had someone to ask for information. It was an impossible situation, and one that Sarek wished he could have spared his daughter. But things were as they were, and there was nothing he could do to change the situation she was in.

Maybe if would have been better if she didn't know, then she would never have been blamed for what followed. But as much as the Vulcans claimed not to feel, they still did, just as deeply if not more, and he cared about his daughter. He wanted her to live, to stay safe. So he made a mistake in judgement, his own logic as clouded as he claimed hers was. And he told her what she wanted to know. He handed her the rope of her own execution, and he did it all while trying to protect her, to keep her safe.

More than ever, more than even in the moment Spock refused to follow the path Sarek had laid for him as the first human-Vulcan hybrid to prove that the humans had worth, Sarek regretted his choice to refuse Michael the future that she always wanted, and that he had wanted for her, but wanted for his son more. It seemed so logical at the time, she was fully human, and he was almost fully Vulcan, she would fit better in Starfleet than Spock could ever hope for. And yet, his refusal of her future was all for nothing, and if he had made a different choice, she would be safe in a Vulcan ship then, instead of facing certain doom in a human vessel.

\---

She never dealt with her trauma, not truly, not properly, and the consequences of that would still make themselves felt. Little by little, the cracks on her mental barriers would show, until she couldn’t stand to keep them up anymore, and then she would be forced to face what happened.

The child didn’t blame herself, not then. She didn’t know how. All she knew was pain, unfocused, untargeted. Too much pain for her to think about it, so she pushed it all away for as long as she could. But the guilt still came for her, slowly but surely, creeping in under her low defenses, first, because ignoring her pain seemed to be forgetting all the people who lost their lives in the attack, then, because a mind locked in a pattern of pain was sure to find a way to repurpose that pain into guilt.

The adult blamed herself, but through the child’s eyes, that same childish notion that somehow she should have been able to predict the impossible consequences of her innocent request. It wasn’t logical, but not everything could be. The guilt wasn’t conscientious, wasn’t verbalized, so how could it be judged by logic? The Vulcan logic, like any other, could only touch what the rational mind could reach.

That same guilt was coloring her actions then, even though she didn’t know it yet. The guilt of her childhood, allied to the guilt of starting this conflict by initiating contact with the Klingons with an accidental death, blocked her judgment more than she would admit, even to herself.

If she had known about her own guilt sooner, if she had been taught to acknowledge that guilt, maybe now she would be able to recognize that no decision she came to could be right, could be sure to be free of undue influence. If she had been allowed to feel like a human would, maybe it would all have been different, but it was too late to change things now.

She was who her trauma shaped her to be. She was who her reaction to that trauma shaped her to be. She was who her denial of emotions shaped her to be.

There was only ever going to be one way this conflict could develop. They were all just going through the motions, playing the cards they had been given, each a product of their own environment, to the point they couldn’t escape what they felt compelled to do.

The battle could have been easily avoided, if even one of the so many previous steps had been avoided, and at the same time, it was unavoidable, the forces of fate stronger than any individual’s will. That single interaction would shape the lives of countless individuals and the path of several species, and it all started because of a chance encounter, and people who couldn’t change the way they reacted to the challenges in front of them.

\---

Michael never meant to fight her captain, but she didn't know how to tell her what to do.

After Sarek explained to her what the Vulcans did, it seemed logical, obvious even. It was the only course of action they could take, but that didn't mean the others would see it that way, and in there laid her mistake. She truly believe that all she needed to do was to explain what they needed to do, and then Georgiou would accept her logic and follow it, firing against the Klingons and keeping all of them safe.

But Georgiou was a kind soul at heart. All the battles she was in never hardened her heart. She was still the perfect embodiment of the Federation values, for better or worse. She wouldn't fire on a ship that didn't pose an imminent danger, and she wouldn't recognize the Klingons' very existence as an imminent danger, no matter what her first officer's logic told her. They were too different on this regard, and it wasn't something any amount of arguing between them could change.

Maybe it was to her disadvantage that Michael had been marked by her childhood trauma, poisoned against the Klingons. But she couldn't ignore what she knew, wouldn't stay quiet while all around her were in danger. She had watched the Klingons attack while there was nothing she could do once before in her life, and she couldn't do it again, not when she knew that things would end in the same way, that they wouldn't stop until they had destroyed everything in their path regardless of whether it posed a threat to them. The Klingons didn't think on those terms, and they would have no problem in firing first if they had to.

Violence was the only language they understood. Aggression was the only thing that meant anything for them. Starfleet's refusal to fire first meant the Klingons would never respect them, and if they didn't respect them, they might as well kill them. The Klingons hated weakness and would seek to eradicate it everywhere they went. As paradoxical as it sounded, only violence could bring peace when the opponent was a Klingon, the only form of peace they knew was the constant threat of mutually assured destruction.

But Georgiou didn't believe her. Or at least, she didn't think that was the better way. They wouldn't fire first, whatever the cost to them might be. She wouldn't abandon her values just because they were faced with a threat, no matter how serious. That was just the type of person she was, full of integrity to the core. And as much as Michael admired her for it, she also knew how dangerous that would be now, and she knew what she had to do to keep them all safe.

\---

Michael never meant to attack Georgiou, or to steal control of her ship.

But everything happened too fast for her to follow. Michael needed to keep them all safe, that was the only thing she kept focusing on. She was the only one who could do what needed to be done, or perhaps the only one who was willing, or even the only one who could see that it needed to be done. She believed in what Starfleet stood for, but she was raised Vulcan above all, and it was impossible for her not to think that at times the best solution wasn't a good one.

She tried to attack the Klingons, and she failed, and perhaps she always knew that she would. The seconds that attacking Georgiou gave her, those few seconds bought at the high price of betraying her captain, her mentor, her friend, would never have been enough. Maybe she knew that all along, but she had to try, and wouldn't dare to hurt her captain more than she already had. It was too hard, what she was demanding of herself, what she believed was necessary, and maybe, she couldn't really do it.

It didn't matter. She still betrayed her captain. She still tried to steal control of the ship. She still order her crewmates to do what she knew the captain would never have allowed. And it was too late to take it back. She tried to argue, tried to make Georgiou see that all she wanted was too keep her safe, that she couldn't lose anyone else to the Klingons, but it was far too late. After what she had done, no one would believe her motivation. And as she was taken away, her only regret was that everyone was still in danger, and that it was all for nothing.

\---

After that, it all happened too fast for guilt or reflection.

She was proven right, but it didn't matter, because it was too late, and others wouldn't see it like this. It didn't matter, all she cared about was saving as many people as she could. Too many lives had already been lost, all of which she blamed of herself.

They had to defeat the Klingons, and after that, she didn't care about what happened to her. Whatever punishment her captain saw fit she would accept, but first, she had to make sure her captain was safe, she wouldn't tolerate nothing else. It was time to react now, and Georgiou finally accepted the Klingons as a threat.

Now, there was no choice left other than to fight them. And as Michael would later discover, this couldn't have been further away from what she wished, as much as everyone seemed to think that she was fueled by revenge. Unfortunately, neither the Klingons nor fate seemed to care much for what she wanted. Now, this was a war, and there was nothing she could do to stop the conflict from evolving. It was too late, and she had failed.

\---

Philippa was dead, or at the very least, she felt herself die.

The battle was too quick for her to think of any consequences, and failure meant death not only to her crew, but for all the Federation vessels that came to their aid. She had no choice other than fighting the Klingons, as much as she had tried to avoid that.

So she fought, and she brought Michael with her, because she knew she could trust Michael to do the right thing. Michael’s little rebellion, placing her as Starfleet’s first mutineer, if she could even be called that, had scared Philippa at first, as had Michael’s willingness to attack without provocation, to fire first in a clear violation of everything Starfleet stood for.

She feared that Michael’s ghosts had finally caught up to her, and that she was allowing herself to be completely controlled by what happened to her as a child. If that were true, all the work they did together over the past seven years would have been for nothing.

But as they were preparing to board the Klingon ship, Philippa wondered if perhaps she wasn’t seeing things from the wrong angle. Maybe she had judged Michael’s actions too hastily, as being motivated solely by fear or hatred. She knew Michael to be better than this, but it was hard to predict the effect such an old trauma could have on someone who was never taught to deal with it.

Only later she would consider that perhaps Michael had a point, not in that her course of action would have been better, Philippa was always a strong proponent of peace and she wouldn’t change her mind about that because of one failed interaction. No, they wouldn’t have followed Michael’s lead either way, but perhaps her idea wasn’t motivated by fear or hatred, but instead by pure unemotional Vulcan logic.

It would be a mistake to assume that because humans were pacifists and Vulcans were pacifists, along with many other Federation people, that their form of pacifism was at all similar.

Humans had a long history of engaging war because they believed their side was right, and it showed, every time that they did all they could to avoid a conflict, because they couldn’t really be sure that they were as right as they thought they were. The history of human peace was shorter than that of Vulcan peace, and it was founded on the too recent memory of pointless wars that almost tore the planet apart before first contact with an alien species was established.

Vulcans, on the other hand, had a much longer history of pacifism, often ignoring the many conflicts they were involved in in the course of those centuries. However, they were considerably more set on their ways as being the best for any scenario. In truth, they believed that any refusal to acknowledge their superior logic should be eliminated to maintain peace, in an almost totalitarian arrogance. It didn’t mean, of course, that they would engage in war with any race that refused their logic, but rather, that if their logic was met with aggression, they would use that same aggression to respond. Because they believed themselves to be in control of their aggression, they could use those displays of force without fear of abusing them.

Philippa didn’t quite agree with Vulcan reasoning on their pacifist approach, but then again, the Vulcans didn’t agree with much of the way humans conducted their affairs. Unfortunately, as much as their races had been working together for centuries now, there was still much they couldn’t agree on, and how to deal with the Klingons seemed to be just one more of those things their policies wouldn’t find a common ground.

Truth was, she worried about Michael, concerned about the effect this encounter with the Klingons would have on her. It was so important to Philippa that they were able to end things peacefully with the Klingons for Michael’s sake, and she had failed on that. Now they were at war, and her first officer would refuse to admit how much facing the ghosts of her past was hurting her.

Philippa wished things could have been different, that the peaceful ways of the Federation could have worked in their favor, at least this time. It was her duty to keep her crew safe, and not only she couldn’t do it, but she couldn’t even make her own first officer feel safe enough to trust her command. She would always remember that as the greatest failure in her command.

She didn’t blame Michael for disobeying her, and didn’t believe there was any real harm in her actions. Placing her in the brig was a necessary immediate response, but mostly aimed at keeping Michael safe from herself. There was no telling what she could do in that situation, and keeping her locked away was a way to know that she was safe and out of the conflict, or at least just as safe as the ship was. If the situation hadn’t escalated that quickly, Philippa wouldn’t have used her help, instead, she would have allowed Michael to come to terms with her feelings before returning to her post.

Unfortunately, that was a luxury that they didn’t have, and her attempt to keep Michael safe almost costed her her life. If they had escaped the situation, she would have made sure that the insubordination didn’t stain Michael’s record, but in the middle of a battle she couldn’t worry about that. It was one of many things she would regret not being able to do.

Instead, they went into battle, and they fought a bigger and stronger enemy, one that wouldn’t stop until everyone in front of them was dead.

It was a battle that they couldn’t win and that they had to win.

So, it wasn’t with surprise that death came for her. The blade violently ripping open her chest as Michael watched, so close and yet so far away. The final thought on her mind was that she hoped somehow Michael managed to escape the ship, that she would be saved. Even in her final moments, all she cared about was her crew, not her own destiny. After all, being a captain always meant that she was willing to die for her crew, for her ship, for the Federation. She just didn’t expect for that to happen that day, just as she was preparing her protegée to gain her own command, but fate cares not for such wishes.

So she died, with Klingon blade on her chest, in an enemy ship, where her body wouldn’t be recovered, too far from everyone she ever cared about, all but alone.

Then she woke up, and as much as her death hadn’t been a surprise, to learn that she was still alive was almost unthinkable.

\---

Michael blamed herself for what happened.

It wasn’t exactly logical, in that her attempt to take control of the Shenzhou failed without a single casualty, but at that same time, that failure meant she couldn’t stop the Klingons from attacking them, and that meant it was her fault. It was so easy to place blame after the fact, the guilt was easier to carry than the pain, that was a feeling she knew all too well.

Her captain died right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. As she felt her body being dematerialized, she tried to fight against the transporter, as impossible as it was, to get to Georgiou and bring her along, or at least to recover her body so that they could be certain that there was nothing that could be done to save her.

In her mind, failing to protect Georgiou and failing to recover her body made her death Michael’s fault, and she was sure others blamed her for it. In the weeks following the Battle of the Binary Stars, she heard it all, how the entire story was twisted until somehow she became the sole provocater of this war. Even her crewmates, who were there as it happened, didn’t correct this version of events.

It made sense. Starfleet needed a scapegoat, especially since they had ignored a Federation ambassador's advice, even though it was given off the record and Sarek couldn’t risk his reputation by declaring what he said. There was a record of Michael being placed in the brig for attacking her captain and taking control of the ship, as well as ordering it to fire on the Klingon vessel. It was too easy, they didn’t even need to frame her, only twist the interpretation of these events, change the weight they actually had in reality.

Michael realized what they were doing before it was properly done. Maybe even in time to revert it. Sarek noticed it too, and tried to warn her as much as he could, but he wasn’t telling her anything new. He even tried to leverage his influence to help her, as much as he could without appearing to be favoring her unfairly, but it was no use. Too many people had died, they needed someone to point the finger to, even if that person was innocent, at least of the crimes they were accusing her.

Michael didn’t fight the accusation. Perhaps she should have, in the name of the legitimacy of the Federation’s justice system, or simply because it’s always unquestionably right to deny an unfair accusation. The health of their justice system depended on not accusing someone they knew innocent just because they needed a traitor to parade around space, a face to show all those that had lost loved ones that the mistake wasn’t in the Starfleet way, but in a single person they could blame and purge from their system.

But she couldn’t fight it, her guilt wouldn’t allow it. Maybe if Georgiou was still alive, she could have convinced her. The captain would surely have fought tooth and nail against that accusation, perhaps even accepting a punishment herself to keep Michael from being imprisoned for the rest of her life. But Georgiou was no longer there, and that was the problem.

Her captain was dead because of her, what did it matter if she wasn’t guilty of the crime she was being accused? Formally, she was a mutineer just the same, even if this war wasn’t on her as they claimed, and morally, she carried all the blame over what happened to Georgiou.

Michael believed she deserved the punishment she received, even if not for the reasons listed in her conviction, and in the grand scheme of things, the formal reasons for her arrest didn’t seem relevant. Not when she caused the death of her captain, her mentor, her best friend. Not when she caused the deaths of so many of her crewmates, people that she knew for years, some of whom she considered friends. Not when she caused the deaths of innocent bystanders in this war, those who came to help, those who just had the misfortune of being in the way of the Klingons.

If the Federation had bothered to send her to a medical evaluation, not just physical, but psychological, perhaps she wouldn’t have been considered fit, at least at that moment, to stand trial. Some mix of PTSD, depression and survivor’s guilt clouding her judgement and preventing her from defending herself so soon after being in the middle of the battle that started a war. Perhaps then she would have been directed to a counselor, her trial delayed until she could assist in her own defense, instead of accepting whatever punishment they saw fit as a way to alleviate the guilt. Perhaps if they cared about due process, about the rules of law, about the Federation’s own procedure, they would have cared to assess her mental state. But this was war and no one cared if she was innocent or guilty, all that mattered was that there were bodies someone had to take responsibility for, and she was willing. The cause was irrelevant, it was just a spectacle, and if she hadn’t accepted her role willingly, she would have been forced to perform it, because it was what the Federation expected of her, what the Federation needed of her, what the Federation demanded of her.

Michael blamed herself for what happened, and everyone else did too, so it was a neat little arrangement, and the truth didn’t figure anywhere in it. When was the truth allowed to stay in the way of what was convenient? It was one thing that didn’t change in centuries of human government, and it was present in most of the Federation races, sometimes the truth and what is best were at odds, and in this case the greater good should always prevail over the truth. It didn’t have to be right, it was just the way things were.

Michael accepted it, blinded by her own blame. Sarek accepted it, knowing that his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do to save her. Amanda didn’t accept it, but she had no power and no one would listen to her save for her husband, who understood her plait but remained unconvinced that there was anything they could do.

\---

It happened like this: Philippa died.

For three point seven minutes. Cause of death: perforated pericardium, internal hemorrhaging. Fortunately for her, both were quite solvable problems, albeit not easily so. Not so fortunately, her injuries weren’t treated by a Federation doctor, but by the Klingons on the ship.

She was dead when they found her, by the side of their fallen leader, but not so dead that she couldn’t be healed. She would have been saved if she was taken to her ship, they had the technology to do it even if their ship falling apart. But that didn’t mean the Klingons couldn’t do the same thing, or rather, that they couldn’t stop the decay of her body long enough for them to steal medical tech from one of the many Federation ships they had disabled and use that tech to heal her completely. They would have saved their leader too, if the damage to his body hadn’t been considerably more intense, to the point that no operation to restore his organs was successful in returning to him the spark of life.

If any other Klingon had found Philippa, her body would be have torn to shreds, as an afterlife punishment for her role in that battle. But she was found by L’Rell, and L’Rell was too much of a spy at heart to ignore a high value hostage, especially one that the Federation would assume dead.

It was only after she was saved that L’Rell found the captain’s records, and realized what they really had in their hands. One of the most condecorated captains in Starfleet history, there was no telling how much she would be worth in a negotiation, if it came to it, not to mention all that she would know about Federation tactics.

Other Klingons despised L’Rell’s methods and refused to take prisoners, at least prisoners that were meant to have tactical value, as they were known to take prisoners they could torture, and sent the survivors to labor camps to perform slave labor until they dropped dead from the conditions. Klingons weren’t known by how well they treated their prisoners.

But L’Rell was from the house of spies, and they didn’t allow Klingon honor to stay in the way of winning a war. The most honorable way was the way that allowed them to win, nothing else. So she went to great lengths to save the human captain, because she knew that this would get them closer to victory.

Of course, this couldn’t be confused with mercy. No prisoner would ever accuse a Klingon of mercy, especially not one that was taken by a spy. They had ways of making people talk, none of them pleasant. Just because the captain had to be kept in one piece to be trade with the Federation, that didn’t mean that she would be kept comfortably, or that she would be treated the way the Federation treated its prisoners.

Her life may have been saved, but she was far from safe, as the following months would prove.

\---

Michael left the prison, but the prison didn’t leave her.

She was still the mutineer that started the war, all of this was still her fault. She still kept track of the body count, there was not a moment she stopped since the first counts went out. She couldn’t stand the guilt any other way, she had to know, because numbers were familiar, numbers she knew how to deal with, numbers kept her calm.

She always knew this was a temporary deal. It had to be, no matter what she did to stop the war, the Federation would still need their scapegoat, that wasn’t about to change anytime soon. Her work on the Discovery was entirely selfless, although she didn’t think of it in these terms.

It wasn’t meant to alleviate her guilt, because her guilt was better alleviated by staying in prison. If she was being punished for what she had done, she didn’t need to punish herself by keeping herself trapped in a repetitive pattern of guilt. Being out of sight and out of mind was so much easier, she had the rest of her life set in front for her, all she had to do was follow the script, and by doing that, she would be ridding herself of all the guilt. It was almost too easy, and she knew she was just hiding in this, trying to escape her own thoughts.

It wasn’t meant to clear her image in the eyes of the Federation. She knew what she had done and how they saw her, no amount of help would change that. She would always be the mutineer, the one who started the war and caused all those deaths, nothing could erase that. It was too much for her to be redeemed, so there would be no use in trying. People hated her, and she would do nothing to stop or change that, because it was their prerogative to hate her after what happened.

It wasn’t meant to reduce her sentence or earn her a pardon. It wouldn’t be possible to be so useful that the Federation would ignore how this war started, and she wouldn’t have held her help hostage anyway. Demanding anything in exchange for her help in this war seemed despicable, even as she was facing the certitude of life imprisonment.

From Michael’s perspective, there was nothing to be gained in returning to Starfleet. But it was still the right thing to do. Taking responsibility for her actions, helping as many people as she could, doing her part to end this war. She wouldn’t have it any other way, but there was no doubt in her mind that this was just temporary.

As much as she cared for her crewmates on the Discovery, this life didn’t belong to her anymore, and as soon as the war was over, she would return to her sentence. And so, forming friendships was pointless. They would all just make it harder for her to turn her back to Starfleet again once the war was over, and she needed to do so. So she kept to herself, and tried not to be a part of that crew.

If only she had known from the start how hard that would be.

\---

At first, Philippa didn’t know where she was or what exactly had happened. It was the expected result of the treatments she was undergoing, a deeply hurt body demanded more work when the mind could accompany, and so it was hard to keep awake, even harder to follow what has happening, to retain her memories.

It didn’t take long for her to realize she was in a Klingon ship. It wasn’t hard to notice, after all. Their design was rather unique. It was harder to know why they had taken her alive, especially when they hadn’t talked to her or tried to extract any information. It was possible, of course, that they were simply waiting for her to recover before interrogating her. In the state she was in, she wouldn’t withstand the Klingon’s integration techniques, she was sure of it.

She closed her eyes every time she heard someone approaching, and tried to look worse than she actually was. If she could be seem as sick for longer, maybe she could buy enough time to recover enough to escape, or perhaps even be rescued.

That was a remote possibility. One person inside a Klingon ship couldn’t do much by herself, especially one that had suffered such extensive damage, so there was little hope of escaping. Rescue seemed even more likely, if she remembered the events correctly, Michael would have assumed her dead, and would have no reason to go looking for her. All in all, her chances didn’t look good, but this was all that she had, so she had to focus on this plan, as unlikely as it seemed.

Day after day, she was biding her time, faking, pretending, making herself useless to the Klingons. If nothing else, she wouldn’t give them anything. Even if she wasn’t able to escape, she would never do anything to help them, no matter what they did to her. In the end, it was just a matter of time, one way or the other. The war would end, she would escape or be rescued, they would kill her, they would send her to a labor camp. Her fates were limited, and there was a sort of comfort in that. She would do all that she could, she wouldn’t give up, but she still knew how things were likely to end.

\---

All the while, Lorca was using her, and Michael didn’t have a clue.

She suspected from the start that he had his own motives, but he seemed to care about her in a strange way, and it was hard to discard that his concern seemed genuine, even if he didn’t extend that to the rest of his crew.

Lorca was an enigma, she wouldn’t presume to know what happened in that mind of his. All she knew was that she was special, and that he had chosen her for some reason. She followed him because she had no alternative, but at times she wondered if his interests really aligned with those of the Federation.

It seemed as if he was all too comfortable in this war. It seemed as if he was all too comfortable with what they had to do to win this war. It seemed as if he was all too comfortable with what Starfleet was becoming during this war.

In a way, she feared him. She feared him because she couldn’t understand his motives. She feared him because she didn’t know what he was capable of. She feared him because she didn’t know if there was anything he would do.

And yet, she still didn’t know he was using her, not concerned about her. He was a master manipulator, tricking all those around him, and she wasn’t an exception. He took advantage of her desire to help people, and he used it to keep her under control.

It was an amazing plan, and it would have worked too. But he wasn’t counting on one thing, captain Philippa Georgiou was still alive, and she knew his other self well enough to realize what was happening, their friendship going back decades. Now, the only thing that could get in the way of his plan was if she were to come back.

\---

She couldn’t wait any longer, they wouldn’t believe her injuries anymore. She had to escape now, or she wouldn’t have another chance. It was likely that she would die, but she had to at least try, it would be against her nature not to.

She took advantage of what was likely one of the last windows she would have of time unsupervised in the infirmary. It was a good thing that Klingons thought humans were so weak, because she wasn’t nearly as sedated as they believed. Still, her body was heavy and made it hard to walk, but she made her way through the hallways, tumbling and hiding and trying to be quiet. There had to be a place there where she could hide, at least until the sedatives wore off.

\---

The mission to infiltrate a Klingon ship was too familiar for comfort.

Michael could still remember all too vividly Georgiou’s death. It was a moment imprinted on her, never to be forgotten. The worst moment of her life since the death of her biological parents so long ago. This trauma, like that one, didn’t have time to heal, but she had no choice other than to press forward. There was too much depending on her choices, too much resting on her shoulders.

A part of her knew that there was a good chance she wouldn’t survive this mission. A part of her welcomed that. A part of her feared that.

It was a duality she had grown accustomed by now, always present along with the guilt. She carried on, no matter what, it was all that she could do.

\---

The last thing that Philippa expected to find was Federation phaser fire, and yet there it was, clear as day. She would recognize it anywhere, even if she couldn’t see the source. There was Starfleet personnel there, trying to remain hidden, probably performing an important mission to decide the course of that war.

She didn’t know enough about what was happening to help with the war, she barely knew anything from the time she stayed with the Klingons, too sick to be of any use, but she still knew how to fight, even with her body in the condition it was in, and if there was someone from her side inside that ship, she would help them.

And just like that, her odds of survival suddenly increased tenfold.

\---

She couldn’t identify who was there at first, but there wasn’t supposed to be any humans on board that Klingon ship. It could be a trap, it could be dangerous, it could be anything. But as much as it posed a risk to their mission, she had to rescue that person.

Michael already had more than her fair share of deaths in her conscience, she couldn't risk adding one more, and if there was something that her captain taught her, it was that the Starfleet way meant always helping those in need, no matter the personal cost. They were on their way out, there wasn't much that they could do. So she did the only thing that she could, she grabbed that person without warning, without precautions, without even a word to her ship.

And then, in the transporter room, she saw for the first time the person that she had rescued. She saw the face that she believed she would never see again. It was her captain, there was no denying that, the captain that she believed dead for all those months, the captain whose death she still blamed herself for even then. It was impossible, she saw her die, it was a memory she would never forget.

Michael knew that, by all logic, by those same principles that she guided herself during her entire life, there was no way that could be real. It had to be a Klingon trick, something designed to lower their guard so that the Klingons could attack. But even as she thought about that possibility, she discarded it, this type of trickery wasn't the Klingon way, it wasn't something that they found to be honorable, so they wouldn't do it, even if it meant a great advantage in the war. They were all just a product of their environment after all, and they wouldn't act against their nature.

This couldn't be real, and had to be real, the conflict was too much for her mind to bear. For a moment, she couldn't process anything else, only that Georgiou was there, alive, in front of her. Only that she didn't cause her captain's death. Only that perhaps she wasn't as guilty as she was convinced to believe for so many months.

She hugged Georgiou, who seemed as surprised to be there as she was to see her, it was all she could, the only process that could prevail in the mess that was her mind on that moment.

There was so much that she needed to know. How this happened. How could she still be alive. What the Klingons whatever with her. How she escaped. What was she doing on that ship.

None of that mattered, not then.

Georgiou being alive changed everything, but that wasn't something Michael could think about, not then, not yet. At that moment, all her logic failed, all her Vulcan upbringing was reduced to nothing. She was made of pure emotion and only that mattered. She was more human in that one moment that perhaps she had been her entire life, and it was all because of Georgiou. The same Georgiou that had always taught her that there was no shame in her humanity, the same Georgiou that had always taught her to embrace her emotions, the same Georgiou that never tried to remove the human or the Vulcan of her.

Soon, the moment would be over and Georgiou's presence would have to be explained and they would return to being in the middle of a war, but for that moment, all that she could think about was that captain Philippa Georgiou was still alive.

And somehow, illogically, that meant that everything would be just fine.


End file.
